Bible Passage: Jeremiah 33:14
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: December 1, 2021 Advent Worship

Bulletin Advent Service Dec. 1

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

In our devotions these next weeks, we are going to zero in on a little word.  It is a word we don’t use much nowadays.  It is the word “behold.”  In the Hebrew Old Testament the word is “hin-nay’”or the related word “hen.”  These words appear over 1100 times in the Old Testament.  The old King James Version always translated it as “behold!”  However, some newer translations don’t translate the word at all because we don’t talk that way anymore.

And that’s too bad.  Because “hin-nay” communicates something very important.  It is a word that calls attention to something extraordinary or spectacular.  Something completely unexpected and earth-shattering.  To use modern vernacular, it highlights something mind-blowing.  It is a way of saying, “This is kind of a BIG deal!”  It invites the reader or the hearer to share in the emotion of this spectacular thing.  It is a word used in several of the prophecies about Jesus.

This year for our Advent meditations we have selected three such prophecies that contain the word “behold.”  Prophecies that invite us to wonder, to stand amazed, to gaze with jaws dropped in wonderment, in short, prophecies that bid us: “Behold!  Jesus!”

We begin tonight with our verse from Jeremiah 33:14.  The translation is a very literal translation of the Hebrew:  Behold!  The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will carry out the good thing which I promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.  Now, when you hear that, your first thought might be, “What is so spectacular about that?  God just says he’s going to keep a promise he made.”

Let’s just stop for a moment.  What “good thing” had the Lord promised?  It is the “good thing” the Lord first promised in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve had done a very “bad thing.”  They had done that one thing forbidden to them.  They had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.    Now their world was undone.  Their created holiness was gone; an uncreated unholiness now clung to them.  They were doomed!

Except for one thing!  A promise!  The Lord steps in and gives a promise.  They had done a very bad thing.  But the Lord promises to do a good thing.  He is going to send the Seed of a Woman to undo and redo what they had done.  He would undo their sin by paying for its guilt.  He would redo righteousness by obeying all the Father requires.  He would save sinners!  It would be the ultimate “good thing!”

With this promise, the Lord put himself on the hook, didn’t he?   He put his faithfulness on trial before us all.  It all hinges on the keeping of this promise!  Can this God be trusted?  The Lord repeated and amplified this promise over the next years, four thousand years to be exact!  He repeated the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He repeated it to King David.  He repeated it in shadow and in type with the whole bloody sacrificial code he gave to Israel.  He repeated it through the oracles of prophets and through the visions of men like Daniel and Zehariah.  Someone has counted over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament that point to Jesus!  Though we might say there were many promises to send the Savior, really it was all one and the same promise…the first one!  The Lord promised to send the Seed of the Woman who will come to defeat the devil and save his people from their sins.  Keep this one, and all are kept!

That is why when the Lord speaks about the days when he will keep this promise he says “Behold” in our text.  The sending of Jesus into this world is a big deal!  The keeping of the promise to send a Savior, THE Savior, ought to leave us stunned in amazement.  The Lord promised to send a Savior who would take the bite of the serpent on his own heel and die for the sins of every son and daughter of Adam and Eve, and he did.  He promised to send a Savior who would get the fangs and the venom of the serpent out of us by crushing the serpent’s head, and he did by his rising from the dead!  Everything God promised to do, he has done, in Jesus.

Here’s more to behold.  The kept first promise of God means the keeping of all God’s promises.  Think of all the promises God has made to you!  The promise of care and protection and the help of the holy angels, the promise of his abiding presence and the use of his almighty power to work everything that happens for your good, the promise to hear and answer every prayer that rises from heart and lips offered up to him in the name of Jesus.  The promise to one day come and take you to that mansion he has prepared for you.  How do you know he will keep all these promises?  He kept the first one, so he will keep them all.  This is what Paul was getting at when he wrote to the Corinthians:  For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “yes” in Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

So much riding on that first promise!  Promise kept!  Behold, the faithfulness of God!  Behold, Jesus!

Amen.

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